Summer Mass Attendance

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Does your church experience a large dip in attendance during the summer? We can really notice it in our church. Do people, “Take the Summer off from God?”
 
That’s not the case at my church; people will miss while they’re away on vacation of course, but that’s all. It’s a small, rural church in a close-knit community, which may make a difference.
plato3 said:
Does your church experience a large dip in attendance during the summer? We can really notice it in our church. Do people, “Take the Summer off from God?”
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It doesn’t appear our church is less populated during the Summer, the weekly contributions seem consistent year-round and getting out of the parking lot is just as bad in the Summer!
 
I know when we lived in Minnesota that parish Mass attendant around the twin cities dropped dramatically, but the Mass attendance up north by the lakes increases. Going up to the “cabin” on weekends is the common thing to do, so people find alternative parishes up north.
 
I think it is uncharitable to assume that people who are absent are not attending mass.

There are many families who go to a weekend home, or camping, or to visit family, etc. They may not be attending mass at their home parish, but they attend where they are.

So, mass attendance at some parishes may indeed go down, but we cannot necessarily draw the conclusion that these people are “taking the summer off.” My husband’s aunt live year round in a lake community, their mass attendance goes UP dramatically during the summer because of weekenders.
 
In our case the attendance goes down drastically in the summer and the collections drop noticeably.

While it’s true that many people leave town, many more simply go to their nearby cabins and whenever they do that they DO skip Mass. We can’t charitably assume anything else since we are the only parish around. Even some parish catechists opt to go to their cabins and miss Mass and they will readily say they were at the cabin to justify not having been at Mass.
 
plato3 said:
Does your church experience a large dip in attendance during the summer? We can really notice it in our church. Do people, “Take the Summer off from God?”
Click to expand...
you can’t really conclude they are taking time off from God as most of them would go somewhere else and you’d expect they’d go to Mass there

i for one always looks for parishes and Mass times wherever i go. so from my home parish’s perspective, i’m not attending, but i’m attending somewhere else. so its not taking time off from God
 
Some attend elsewhere and some skip. I would like to hope that most are attending mass while on vacation but I know people that do not.
 
We do see somewhat decreased Sunday Mass attendance in the summer. However, I’ve noticed that in my parish, daily Mass attendance is up in the summer. Daily Mass attendance seems to be best in Lent and in the summer.
 
i went to this small town a couple of years ago and they have a very small Catholic church there. and the priest even acknowledged that they are a small town and a small population, and even fewer are Catholic. but he’s happy during the summer months because there’s more people in the church, because of tourists 👍
 
plato3 said:
Does your church experience a large dip in attendance during the summer? We can really notice it in our church. Do people, “Take the Summer off from God?”
Click to expand...
How do you define summer?
Here in the Philippines we have an average daily temperature throughout the whole year of 30 degrees celsius. That’s 86 fahrenheit to our American friends (USA is the only country in the world left stuck on fahrenheit).
My local parish church has an average 80% Mass attendence every Sunday no matter what time of year it is. We have 10 Masses each Sunday to accomodate everyone.
 
No. Actually, Mass attendance goes up a bit because we are in a resort town and lots of people attend Mass while on vacation. They aren’t in their home parishes, obviously, but they attend Mass, nonetheless.
 
Bbigam said:
I’m considering it to be pretty much when the public schools are out. Here, that’s generally from the second week of June through the first week of August.
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For us it’s from the last week of June to Labour Day.
 
thistle said:
How do you define summer?
Here in the Philippines we have an average daily temperature throughout the whole year of 30 degrees celsius. That’s 86 fahrenheit to our American friends (USA is the only country in the world left stuck on fahrenheit).
My local parish church has an average 80% Mass attendence every Sunday no matter what time of year it is. We have 10 Masses each Sunday to accomodate everyone.
Click to expand...
actually the trend in the Philippines is evening masses become more jampacked while afternoon and late morning mass attendance decrease

also, the parishes that are airconditioned has an upward spike in their attendance as well
 
Weather and climate do seem to have an impact on mass attendance. There are cool days in the summer where parishes don’t take a decline in attendance while snowy days in the winter do. Personally I like to attend parishes where they have air conditioning but I notice that even there, people aren’t necessarily flocking.
 
I was visiting a church “up north”. A parishioner explained how the church was four times bigger during the summer. Those people are not attending their cold weather parish during the summer.
 
Yes, our summer Mass attendance drops due to people who are away on travels and visits.
 
Seemed to me the Mass attendance started dropping right around Pentecost…really sad since that is such a major feast day.

However, it coincided with the end of CCD so you can draw the conclusions…
 
At my parish and the parish where I work as a musician, the attendance of parishioners or regular attendees (many college students go home for the summer and most people either go to the shore or the mountains for vacation in the summer) it drops, but it grows a lot with tourists and visitors to the city. They are sometimes packed with new faces. So, it does tell me that vacationers do attend mass.

As a child through my college years, my family used to go away to the mountains in the middle of no where many weekends during the summer and would attend mass up there. So, from our parish’s perspective we weren’t attending mass although in actuality we were.
 
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